


Sounds Like Everyone (Day 1: Soulmates)

by AsYouCommand (OminousHummingObelisk)



Series: AUgust All Year Long [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Alien anatomy, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Masturbation, Medical Horror, Other, Virginity, mention of rape, sexual fantasies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:08:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24428536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OminousHummingObelisk/pseuds/AsYouCommand
Summary: Why, hello, Doctor. It's a pleasure to finally meet you.In which the first words spoken by one's sparkmate literally resonate inside of one's spark.
Series: AUgust All Year Long [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1763485
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	Sounds Like Everyone (Day 1: Soulmates)

The medic leaned in close, putting the bell of the stethoscope against the dome of the newly-formed medic's spark chamber. He tilted his head slightly, listening for the sound of the voice that would always radiate from the twelfth lower dexter sector of every spark, repeating softly for all of a mech's long life until it heard itself echoed back by a voice in the outside world.

The older medic smiled, and the new-forged medic fidgeted on the slab, restraining his urge to yank the earpieces away from his elder's audials so he could listen to his own spark speaking. "What is it saying?" 

"Well, at least we know that you probably won't wash out of medical school," the elder said wryly. "But I think you might have problems filtering out false positives." He held the bell in place while he pulled the rest of the apparatus from his head, offering it. Pharma grabbed it eagerly and struggled for a moment to align the pieces with his own audials. He had never seen a stethoscope until three minutes ago, after all. 

The older medic's smile remained as Pharma pressed his hands tightly over the earpieces, willing them to do their work, to make it louder. Pharma worried, irrationally, that they wouldn't work for him somehow; he didn't understand how they worked anyway, maybe there was a wrong way to— 

He heard it - a rich, dark voice just on the edge of the complex sound of his spark pattern. He loved that voice instantly. It was the sound of the mech that he would unfailingly connect with as soon as they met and for the rest of his life, as perfect as a lock and key. "Why, hello, Doctor. It's a pleasure to finally meet you." ...He listened for more, but there was only a stretch of silence and then the words repeated themselves. He realized what the old medic had meant and groaned, deeply disappointed, as he unhooked the device and passed it back. 

The medic gripped the newforge's shoulder comfortingly. "Don't worry too much. A lot of people have the exact same problem. You can try to filter them out by memorizing the exact sound of the voice, the accent, the intonation pattern, or you can just ignore it entirely. Honestly, most people bond because they care for each other, not because they stumbled across some Primus-intended mystic sparkmate." 

"What do you do if you've already bonded to somebody and then you meet your sparkmate?" 

A chuckle. "Figure that out if it happens. You have a lot of other things to think about that are more important than this sort of thing." A pause. "I would hope, though, that you wouldn't forget the reasons why you'd bonded with your conjunx in the first place. What you'd have with them isn't something to throw away so easily." He smiled wider at the thoughtful look on Pharma's face and gave the shoulder a comradely shake. "Now, head down to Room 306 through that door so they can get you enrolled in a medical university." 

* * *

It was a long while after his forging - when he was busy starving in the gutters because he could hardly touch anything and thus couldn't work even if someone would have hired him - when Damus heard the story about the spark-voice and convinced a backalley medic to check his. He'd assumed that the story was false, because of all the things that Primus could be doing to influence the lives of his creations, he'd imprinted the first words spoken by each person's destined love inside their sparkbeat? 

But clearly Damus cared about that lie enough that he came back after the medic had brushed him off with a comment about not working for free. Damus had begged and scrounged for over a week to get enough shanix for five minutes of that mech's time in a hidden room below a bar. The sound of stomping feet and pulsing music thudding through the ceiling had made it very hard for him to hear anything with his crude empuratee audials. Regardless, he had opened eagerly to let the medic's scuffed fingers and rusty stethoscope press against his bared spark casing. 

He could hear it. A soft, terrified voice. "No. Please, no, it can't be you." 

Grief overwhelmed him and he stared sightlessly in shock. His lifemate would be horrified when they met. Damus covered his crude eye with a claw and knew exactly why. 

The medic pulled the stethoscope from his nerveless claws, unhooked it from his head, and shoved him off the rusting bench and out into the understreet hallway. The lock snapped into place behind him. 

* * *

Pharma was moving in high-class circles before he even graduated from medical training. This pleased him because his spark-voice had had an elegant, upper-class accent. 

After he graduated, the elite practically fought each other over him. Having one's health managed by him became another conspicuous badge of wealth that could win the envy of one's peers. There were thousands of excellent surgeons across the planet, but some aristocrats actually refused to have their repairs done by anyone other than Pharma. They'd wait months, letting their conditions deteriorate, because they could not bear the loss of face if they accepted care from anyone less. 

Pharma was aware of his quality, but ultimately he only craved the work. He let other people handle his schedule - people who delighted in managing politics alongside medical care. He had no doubt that he could likely set up his own private hospital for the disgustingly wealthy, but he remained attached to one or another of the major Iaconian hospitals to spare himself the trouble. 

His dear friend Ratchet, who was nearly as much in demand as Pharma himself, had actually limited his work hours in order to manage a charity clinic down in the Dead End. Pharma was often tempted whenever Ratchet invited him to come help. He had no interest whatsoever in charity or the suffering of the poor and lowly. Rather, he felt drawn by the variety of horrific conditions that one could only encounter in such places, never in the shining towers of Upper Iacon. He felt his skill rotting after centuries spent doing little more than tightening bolts on fretful nobles who only made appointments with him for social credit. 

Ratchet described the level of damage that Dead End mecha considered normal. He often had to crowbar their torsos open because so many hinges had failed and fused; some, a step above Empty, had solid coats of rust across their entire internal cavities. Any repairs, even some diagnostics, required slicing through layers of crust just to find whatever was left of connectors and bolts. Parts of them would be crumbling into dust while they were still alive, still able to think and feel and know exactly what was happening to them. The descent into cannibalism, Ratchet believed, had as much to do with Empties escaping the horror through madness as it did with the physical degeneration of the brain module. 

Ratchet had so many fascinating stories about the conditions in the slums, and Pharma was entranced. He wanted their infirmity, their disease, all of their failing structures to be given over to his talent so that he could feel himself being eternally sharpened against them. In another life, he probably would have reshaped his career to focus exclusively on the impoverished and downtrodden. 

But his spark-voice had had those clear upper-crust tones, and Pharma was secretly just enough of a romantic that he still hoped to meet his sparkmate even after millennia of waiting. If he immersed himself in the dregs of the species, his chances of meeting people who spoke in such a way would end up being fractions of a percent. He wouldn't take the risk. He kept going to the society parties, drinking engex that cost hundreds of shanix per glass and wasting whole evenings being excruciatingly elegant. 

"Why, hello, Doctor. It's a pleasure to finally meet you." He'd lost track of how many times he'd heard it. He'd quickly learned to cover up any excitement that he might feel as a result of those words, but he always responded to them in creative ways. Perhaps his sparkmate would be listening for those unique phrases and they could instantly know each other. But people only chuckled airily at his wit, revealing no recognition, and Pharma learned to swallow constant disappointment. 

Perhaps he'd made a mistake, staying in high society. Every so often, he would listen to his own spark again, letting the words repeat in his ears until they became a formless rhythm. The voice had a menacing undercurrent, possibly. Something like a dark joy, or cruelty. Perhaps his sparkmate was a career criminal in the slums, one of those underworld barons who styled themselves like the dark mirrors of the Towers aristocrats. 

He waited for so long. A war started. Pharma felt some concern over that and joined the clearly-superior side. And then he received an unusual transfer request from Chief Strategist Prowl, who wanted him to work at a tiny clinic on a frozen mining world. Pharma decided then to lose the last of his hope and cease to care about his spark-voice at all. He took the assignment. 

* * *

Damus didn't want to frighten anybody. He felt a preemptive guilt over what he would do to his sparkmate. Maybe they'd have another reason to be scared right when they met him and perhaps Damus could save them from danger and they would be happy and grateful and then— 

It was a stupid wish. He knew what the words said. Desperately trying to contort the meaning into anything more palatable was just...pathetic. His lifemate wouldn't want him. He was somebody's awful surprise, a ticking time bomb lobbed by Primus Himself. People had no obligation to actually bond with their sparkmates and Damus doubted that his would want anything to do with him. 

The words also seemed to imply that the speaker knew who he was already? Although that was impossible because Damus was literally nobody. The government had been interested in his green spark when it had bubbled out of the ground, but he'd been permitted to slip through the cracks after he'd proved himself to be catastrophically worthless. Society had left him to crawl off into the gutter to die, the better to dispose of himself without further trouble to them. 

That resentment burned, hard and sharp, under his spark and never entirely left him. 

He occasionally replayed the high-definition memory file that he'd made of those minutes when he had listened to his spark. The words repeated behind the radiation noise, but he couldn't bring himself to listen to them for long. They made him too sad, and the sparks that welled up in his single eye when he became overwrought strained the inferior optical mechanisms in frightening ways. He'd once been blind for over an hour while his electrical system sorted itself out, terrified that the condition would be permanent and it would be because he'd listened to his stupid sparkmate being horrified for too long and had felt too sorry for himself about it. 

But he'd listened to it enough that he thought he could detect a higher-class tonal structure behind all the obvious emotional elements. So he was destined to crush some rich glitch's spark just by existing? He tried to make himself look forward to it spitefully, imagining a glittering beauty realizing that Primus intended him to be with a rusting empuratee who stank of his own impending death. What else did he really have to look forward to, he reasoned. 

And yet a beautiful senator did come for him, down from the gleaming spires of the real city, tracking Damus with his personal security team until his prey could escape no longer. Damus peeked out from under an overturned dumpster and wondered at that impossible creature down in the slums where no color was bright and nothing could shine. The senator crouched down just out of arm's reach, his smile gentle and fearless. He didn't say those dreaded words, though, but instead, "I promise that I won't hurt you. I'm Shockwave. I want to help you understand that power that you have. Will you come with me?" 

And though the senator had more power than Damus could comprehend, the look on his face somehow made it clear that Shockwave only used that power out of kindness. That was why Damus trusted him and followed him out of the slums. 

He met so many new people after being rescued, and none of them were horrified by his appearance. They even thought of his accidental machine-murders as puzzles that could be usefully solved to help him control his power. He was happier to have all of that than to have one sparkmate who probably wouldn't want him anyway. 

And then Senator Shockwave was taken away. He came back, but...he didn't come back. 

* * *

The trip to Messatine was long because the mining barge was huge and slow and the route arced far around the edges of the war. Pharma realized that he was alright with the length of the trip because it gave him the opportunity to settle into giving up. He mingled with the crew for a few days, hoping uselessly to hear the voice from some diamond in the rough among them, but he heard only the crude accents of manual laborers. 

Perhaps it was strange, but he wanted to say goodbye to that voice before he stopped caring about it forever. He had kept himself for its owner all his life, letting loyalty sustain him. He decided to give himself to it at last, though it had no body to take him with. 

And so he parted his chestplates late one night, stethoscope magnetized over his audials, and reached down inside himself to place the bell against his spark case. He closed his eyes and listened and listened. He opened himself between his thighs and put his hand across his equipment. Before, he had been so eager to remain untouched that, when his body had ached too strongly for companionship, he would only rub himself through his closed armor and bring himself to climax despite the discomfort of his unextended parts. Now, though, he let himself flower open under his explorations, stroking his spreading valve. 

The voice was so rich and deep. He imagined its owner above him, the mystery of his form making him large, dark, and broad - dimensions that might create such a powerful resonance. He imagined his sparkmate leaning over him, stroking his valve like this, making him wet and open. He thought of black on black plating, perhaps the slightest scattering of gold or silver so that his lover looked like a starfield of angles, a sky coming down to cover him. His sparkmate's cable - he imagined it emerging from the mirrored darkness of the other's body, an instrument of pleasure reaching for him out of the velvet void of the sound. He lifted his hips awkwardly, offering his valve up to the one destined to love him. 

It was difficult to immerse himself in the fantasy while keeping the stethoscope pressed hard against his spark. 

He was so open that several fingers could slip inside together, and he pushed himself in up to the knuckle with a cry. The night sky above him was thrusting into him, starting gently out of respect for his virgin tenderness, and then moving with increasing strength until Pharma imagined that his hips were being shoved upward by the force of it. Warm, clean exhaust came down out of the stars, washing over him, the movement of the air letting him feel just how wet he was. The first few sections of his spike had emerged from its housing, jutting up alongside his wrist, ruining the completeness of the fantasy as he felt his own arm moving instead of the lover above him. 

His sparkmate was gazing down at him with warm eyes, wanting to please him, wanting him to finish first so that his lover could watch Pharma's face as he overloaded around that perfect spike. How he loved those eyes on him, and he gasped into the murmur of the voice coming softly into his ears - _please yes please i love you i love you so much i need you_ \- and he arched up into the loving sky as he came. Oil gushed out between his fingers as his valve stroked the imagined cable; he shoved his hand in hard, imagining his lover pushing deep and moaning Pharma's name as fluid rushed out of him and into that untouched valve. Pharma came again just at the thought of it. 

Reluctantly, gasping for breath, he let his hand slide free and his body uncurl. The bedding beneath his hips was soaked. His shaking hand was still stretched down inside his own chest, keeping the stethoscope pressed up against his casing, though the words had long blurred into a beautiful smooth nonsense in his mind. Only the rich, dark resonance of them within himself remained. 

The tip of his spike was still jutting free, and as he slid his oil-slicked hand around it he imagined his lover licking it, taking it into his mouth as those warm eyes met Pharma's and held them. How shamelessly he sucked it, enjoying how quickly and needfully it slid free and hardened. The spread of dark, beautiful wings overshadowed him as his sparkmate rose up, looming over him as he settled his knees alongside Pharma's chest and lowered himself. He sighed with relief as Pharma's spike filled him perfectly. Again, he started to move gently, letting Pharma learn how the stroke of his valve felt, and then he rode harder, eyes closing and features slack as sensation overwhelmed him. Pharma watched him and loved him and lasted what seemed like hardly any time at all before his love pressed down hard against his body and Pharma poured himself out inside another's frame for the first time. Almost too late, he recalled that he had his chest open and twisted to one side, trying to shield his components from his fluid. He didn't entirely succeed, but at least nothing splattered on his spark. 

Having lost his grip on the fantasy as well as on the bell of the stethoscope still dangling inside his chest, he opened his eyes and looked up at the rusting ceiling. The ache struck him again, now that he was undistracted. He had waited for so long, and this pathetic act was all that he had to show for it. He was alone. 

* * *

He was Tarn now, so far away in time and form from the wretched, rusting thing that the senator had scraped off the Dead End pavement. His bitterness fueled him - so many vintages of bitterness that he considered himself a connoisseur of hatreds. He hated so many for so many reasons, and his hatred of his still-unknown sparkmate was only one among them. He had grown into the horror of that voice. When he came to realize the lethal potential of his own speech, he leaned into the sound of that memory, eager now to make himself worthy of it by becoming a glorious fiend instead of a mere disgusting remnant. He learned to wring that horror from others. 

It came to be that he heard those words with his outward ears many, many times, from people who usually didn't survive their meeting. None of them seemed to respond to whatever he said in any unique fashion, but sometimes Tarn fantasized that he had casually murdered his sparkmate somewhere along the way, leaving him among the anonymous wreckage of bodies in his wake. He imagined that he had accidentally made himself alone forever and now he would never have to worry about hearing the exact cadence of that voice, the one that he truly had yet to hear. He told himself that he wanted no part of whatever pathetic creature would gasp in such fear at his appearance. 

Lord Megatron did not quail before Tarn's voice, even though he was as helpless against it as any other mech. Lord Megatron would never love him, but his love for his lord was enough. It sustained him as he twisted over the millennia, fueled by viciousness, quietly tormented by the voice that echoed in the back of his mind that he commanded himself to forget. He needed only one love, a cold and unreturned love, the love of a weapon for its wielder. 

He had become accustomed, back in those days of Damus and Glitch, to the shy, denied pleasure of keeping himself for his future sparkmate. He thought about interfacing sometimes, now. He often thought about it in connection with his lord. But his lord emphatically did not want him, and he refused to acknowledge the way that that bitterness settled in alongside all the others. Sometimes he thought that he should lose his virginity as a weapon should, by brutalizing another; he thought about that fairly often, especially when he permitted rape inside his hellish kingdom of Grindcore and as part of the games of his DJD. He told himself that he would simply pick the next convenient target and use them until he had sated all his newness. 

Yet he never could. Perhaps hate had made him impotent, he thought carelessly. It didn't really matter. It certainly didn't matter that he had not yet heard those exact words in that exact tone. 

The Delphi clinic, with its convenient sources of t-cogs to feed his wound-licking and its easily-terrified civilian staff, was a personal amusement of his. Let the Autobots toil on Messatine the way the proto-Decepticons had in the days of his lord's slavery. He took the finest of their fruits for his team and let his companions play among the mines just enough to keep their inhabitants in perpetual terror. Once in a while, some official would stand up to him and a lesson had to be taught, but the enemy always sent him replacement toys. 

Like this one, this lean and aristocratic jet whose clear eyes were so arresting. He was beautiful, and he would break beautifully when Tarn took him in hand today, at their first meeting in an icy box canyon far from Delphi's warmth. His stealth mods kept him perfectly silent as he stepped out to behold his prey. The way the ice clung to those wingtips, the way the fear was already making gusts of steam rise from those slender outvents. He grinned behind his mask and said, "Why, hello, Doctor. It's a pleasure to finally meet you." 

The jet turned, his eyes wide with a species of shock unfamiliar to Tarn, and opened his mouth to speak.

**Author's Note:**

> As this was the first day of AUgust, I actually tried to do the proper thing and wrote most of this in the two-hour sprint that I’d set aside for it. I found out in the process that I don’t think I really know how to write AUs, since not a lot really changed apart from just the added bit of worldbuilding.


End file.
